Nashville notes.

Driving On

Johnny Cash May Keep Climbing The Charts

Johnny Cash, back at the top of the album charts via his duet with U2 on the pop act's just-released smash package "Zooropa," appears to be gathering new recording momentum of his own.

Cash-scheduled to perform Friday at the Inland Meeting and Expo Center in Downers Grove with his wife, June Carter Cash, their son, John Carter Cash, and the Carter Family-has departed Mercury/PolyGram Records in Nashville, where his career for the past few years had seemed moribund, and has signed with pop executive Rick Rubin's new Def America Records.

He is working on a project described as aimed for release before the end of 1993 and has written three new songs.

One is "Drive On," a song reportedly getting strong response in concert; titled after an expression popular with American troops during the Vietnam War, it concerns horrors experienced by American service personnel in Vietnam and the necessity to "drive on" past them in order to begin living normally again.

A spokesman says Cash is emphasizing that his Def America contract, coupled with the U2 duet, should not be taken as a turn of his back on country music; rather, he is listening to country songs as well as more contemporary material from around the world.

The album, to be distributed by Warner Bros. in the U.S. and by PolyGram internationally, will be produced by Rubin, founder of the company.

Following a vacation at his Jamaica island home, Cash has just hit the U.S. concert trail, where he is expected to perform about 120 shows this year, including 44 at the Wayne Newton Theater in Branson, Mo.

Cash's U2 duet resulted from a February Cash concert in Ireland in which he was joined onstage by the internationally-prominent pop act.

- Vince Gill's Aug. 2 show at Nashville's Starwood Amphitheatre with Mary-Chapin Carpenter will reportedly be the first time Gill has performed for money in Music City. . . . George Strait is helping spread the popularity of brand-new and highly traditional female vocalist Bobbie Cryner, who will open some shows for him. Now being managed by Strait manager Erv Woolsey, Cryner can be expected to rise in public profile.

Rising star Doug Supernaw-whose second single, "Reno," has been getting a lot of airplay around the nation-has been undeterred by an extraordinary run of bad luck.

"There are a lot worse things happening to people than are happening to us," says Supernaw, doubtless referring to the mammoth floods gutting Middle America.

Still, Supernaw qualifies as a significant victim, considering that:

(1) In March he broke his neck in a surfing accident.

(2) He was barely out of his neck brace when he was in a head-on auto crash.

(3) He collapsed from the effects of food poisoning on the sidewalk in front of a Richmond, Va., radio station where he was to have been interviewed.

(4) His and his band's instruments and many irreplaceable personal belongings were stolen from their bus in a stop at Columbus, Ohio.

(5) His guitar player, Justin White, fractured a disc in his back in a fall and is unable to travel.

(6) His steel guitarist, Don Crider, broke two knuckles defending himself from an attacker after a show.